Filmmaker Tips and Tricks shared by Youngcuts Film Festival

As a service to their young filmmakers who submit films to the YoungCuts Film Festival, the festival is featuring weekly filmmaking tips fromYoungCuts Alumni, Partners and Friends.

Herewith my personal selection of best advices.

Become friends with actors and production crew

Go for Creative and Intelligent Over Flash and the Unnecessary

Silence is more powerful than any amount of witty banter or clever one-liners.

Focus on telling your story purely visually

Your Film is Too Long

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Who is Your Audience?

Less is More

Hire a Dog

If It Doesn’t Look Natural, It’s No Good

Develop Relationships with Your Teachers

More at http://www.youngcuts.com/filmmaker_tips_and_tricks

Courtesy Michael Ryan - Festival Director - www.YoungCuts.com

Film Length:

Your film is too long. Accept that now. It may be too long by thirty seconds or too long by ten minutes, but guaranteed it is too long.

Norman McLaren, the Oscar Winning Animator at the National Film Board once gave a screening of his award-winning film Pas-de-Deux to NFB employees on the 10th Anniversary of his short film winning the BAFTA award for Best Animated Film. After the screening, he complained that the film was still too long, "I could cut another minute out..." 

If you can cut an entire scene out of your film or if you can trim the start or end of a scene and not lose any information or emotional content, you probably need to. 

Pas de deux by Norman McLaren, National Film Board of Canada

wawwww, where would you cut a minute in here, magic! Remember Norman McLaren was Ryan Larkin's best friend